


Someday

by cteranodon



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 16:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11016900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cteranodon/pseuds/cteranodon
Summary: Sebastian's husband surprises him with a wonderfully thoughtful gift. Sebastian responds by putting the gift to the best use he can think of - and by stealing the farmer's rusty key.





	Someday

**Author's Note:**

> I use the name of my own SV character, Adrian. Other than the name, I tried to keep him mostly generic, so you can picture your own MU in this fic. The one thing that's specifically from my own play through the game is Devotion.

For all Sebastian had hated on heavy-handed romantic gestures earlier in his life, you’d think he wouldn’t be so floored by the latest of his husband’s grand displays of admiration.

Well, alright. Obviously, most of your typical script for dating and marriage is based in the sort of commodified gender-normative romance culture that Sebastian had always loathed, long before he knew how not-straight he was. To him, it was just another rigid structure of society that needed to be taken down a few pegs.

And really, when he thought about it, he could see what the difference was. You give your beloved a nice gemstone or something, well, okay. Sebastian would take a diamond if he was given one, sure. But that would be so _impersonal_. So… generic. Anybody could give a diamond and act all high and mighty about it, because just about anybody would take a nice-looking chunk of rock.

Sebastian would be tempted to just… sell it, anyway. What use would he have in owning something like that?

He’d still take it, though.

Anyway, that would have to happen in another lifetime, where Sebastian hadn’t married somebody who was _loaded_ and who had just surprised him with the most ridiculous gift of all time.

“Do you like her?” Adrian asked him, wearing a wide-eyed grin and holding in his arms the newest addition to his farm.

“ _Like_ her?!” A small part of Sebastian was grimly aware that he must have been smiling and blushing like a fool. “I _love_ her!!” He took a step and reached out to gently stroke the black feathers of the chicken in Adrian’s arms. “So this is…”

“She’s a void chicken, yes,” Adrian said. “I don’t have much use for void eggs, but I know they make you happy, so…”

It was grandiose, romantic, cheesy, and the kind of thing only Adrian would do.

In other words, it was perfect.

“I was waiting to show her to you until she was looking ready to lay eggs here,” Adrian explained. “You have no idea how hard it is to hide an entire _chicken_ from you, by the way.”

“I guess I need to name her, don’t I?” Sebastian asked.

Adrian laughed sheepishly. “Uhh, you can, you definitely can, but just so you know, I kind of already gave her a name.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “What name is that?”

“Devotion.”

Devotion.

Adrian was raising a chicken just to give her eggs to Sebastian, taking up valuable space in a coop that was starting to get a bit crowded, probably pushing up the farm’s monthly order of feed to boot… and he named her Devotion.

It had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and Sebastian felt himself falling in love with Adrian again for, what, the tenth time that week? Sometimes, it was hard to keep track.

“I think that name can stay,” Sebastian said merrily.

“Good!”

Adrian held Devotion out for him to hold. He took her, internally scoffing at the fact that he would later need to look up how to ingratiate oneself with a chicken.

*************

There were several things Adrian didn’t know.

Back when Adrian and Sebastian were first becoming close, Adrian was spending about an hour every few days in Sebastian’s room. Adrian was a very quiet person in general, so Sebastian had quickly stopped feeling as pressured around him as he usually did around people.

But one day, while Sebastian was working at his desk, Adrian walked in with a bag and a smile.

Without looking away from his computer, Sebastian asked “What do you have there?”

“No idea if you’ll like this,” Adrian said, “but I got my hands on it, and it sort of reminded me of you.”

 The last four words were all that was necessary to catch Sebastian’s attention. He went to grab the item from Adrian’s hands.

“Careful, it’ll break easily,” Adrian warned.

Sebastian heeded Adrian’s words and gently opened the bag.

Upon seeing what was inside, he felt himself beaming, almost ready to jump for joy. “A void egg! How did you know?”

Adrian shrugged. “Like I said before, just intuition. Seems like your sort of thing.”

It _was_. Adrian had no idea how much it was. The only question was how he wanted to use this one in particular. As Sebastian palmed the egg and looked at the red flecks that adorned its black surface, he decided the best way would be the one Adrian would get to watch.

Sebastian opened a drawer in his desk and rummaged around one-handed. Thankfully, his organization skills weren’t _too_ obscene, otherwise he’d almost literally be looking for a needle in a haystack. But finding his sewing mini-kit still took a few more seconds than he’d have liked, with Adrian standing there watching silently.

“Found it.” Sebastian handed the egg back to Adrian and opened the kit, pulling out a sewing needle. “Follow.”

Sebastian bounded to his door, up the stairs, and into the kitchen, with Adrian close behind.

“What’s going on?” Adrian asked.

“You’ve never seen someone hollow out an egg before?” Sebastian said, acting surprised. He wasn’t trying to be snobbish about it, and hoped his tone didn’t sound like he was; it would just be more fun if he could build Adrian’s curiosity.

It appeared to work. Adrian’s eyes went wide as Sebastian put a bowl on the countertop. His face reflected a dozen questions, but he didn’t ask any of them, too eager to see what would actually play out. He gently handed the egg back when Sebastian’s hand beckoned.

Sebastian poked the needle through one end of the egg’s shell. He then pulled it back out and pushed it through the other end, this time wriggling it around inside.

“Why are you doing that?” Adrian asked.

“Which part?”

Without taking his eyes off the egg, Adrian imitated the motion Sebastian was making – it looked like he was winding the world’s tiniest and most invisible Jack-in-the-box.

“I’m loosening up the yolk, and making this hole wider,” Sebastian explained.

Without another word, Sebastian held the egg over the bowl, wider hole face-down, and bent down to put his mouth on the top end. With all the air he had, he blew into the needle-width opening.

Little by little, the dark suspension of void white and yolk oozed from the bottom of the shell and into the bowl. Adrian watched with awe. Clearly this was just as enticingly strange to him as Sebastian had hoped.

About halfway through the process, Adrian asked “May I try?”

“Of course!” Sebastian stood up straight, shaking the hair out of his eyes, and offered the egg to Adrian. They switched places as Adrian set to work.

“Once we’re done with this,” Sebastian said, “I’ll let the shell dry, then put it on my shelf. I think it’ll make a nice decoration, don’t you?”

Adrian paused to take a breath. “It’ll be perfect!” he huffed.

He gave that horribly purehearted smile he’d worn a few days after he moved into Pelican Town, when he and Sebastian met. Then he bent down again and pressed his lips back to the egg.

 _Perfect kissing lips_ , Sebastian felt some part of himself thinking.

Not something he’d dreamed of thinking. He might have pushed it out of his head, but he also couldn’t stop himself from noticing the magnificent feeling that coursed through him at the very notion of being kissed by the quiet, cheerful farmer that had given new life to the drab town after just months of living there. He had already managed to make Sebastian not feel all that sorry all the time that he lived away from the city; here he was now with the brand new miracle of making Sebastian feel flushed and buoyant at the thought of kissing a guy.

That was the first thing Adrian didn’t know. The moment Sebastian first had an inkling of his feelings was the moment when Adrian was red-faced, looming over a countertop, unloading his lungs into an eggshell.

***************

Sebastian stepped gingerly into the house, holding the very first egg laid by Devotion. His extremities tingled with excitement over what he was about to do. He wrapped the egg in a dozen paper towels and placed it in a glass jar, but his mind was elsewhere.

The second thing Adrian didn’t know was all of the applications Sebastian had in mind for void eggs, beyond using the shells for decoration.

The third was that Sebastian had stolen his key while he was asleep.

Sebastian shut the jar and walked over to his desk in the far room. As always, its insides were just-organized-enough chaos. Sebastian hoped it wasn’t so organized that Adrian might have happened to see the thin book entitled _Understanding Shadow People_.

He skimmed the pages a final time, trying to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything important. Then he put on an old pair of shoes and headed out the door with the jar, towards Marnie’s ranch.

Sebastian had been fascinated with monsters all his life, and this Adrian knew very well. How Adrian thought he could meet with one without Sebastian noticing all the telltale signs was a mystery, though – talking with a shadow person had left on Adrian short-lasting, subtle physical changes. They were exactly as Sebastian had always seen them described.

Past Marnie’s ranch, Sebastian arrived at the grate that covered the city’s sewer. Adrian’s key fit perfectly in the lock, and Sebastian stepped inside.

Ignoring the standard sewer stench, Sebastian could feel something… _off_ about the place. He had to admit, it was thrilling. Based on what he felt when he went into the mines, this sensation had to be a feeling of the presence of magic. There were probably much more unfathomable forces in this sewer than one shadow person.

Sebastian had reached a tiled path that was relatively sewage-free. He turned a corner, holding tightly onto his jar, wondering what this individual he was hopefully about to meet would be like, or how much they’d care for strangers.

He turned another corner, and there they were.

They were short, obsidian-black, and had an indescribably alien face, like someone had taken a human face and removed every trait that could possibly distinguish it from others.

And they nodded to him.

“H-hello,” Sebastian said, with a nervous wave.

The shadow person returned the wave.

“I’m excited to meet you. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.”

They nodded at him again, this time contorting their face into what Sebastian had to assume was a smile.

Sebastian had the impression that it wasn’t unheard of for shadow folk to live near humans, and that they’d learn to listen to and speak the local language very quickly if they didn’t know it already. The fact that this one wasn’t responding to him aloud made him uncertain – had everything he’d learned about them been dubious?

Just then, shadowy wisps appeared from thin air at Sebastian’s waist-level, right in front of him. When he got a better look at them, he saw that they were forming words, like an intangible and eldritch ink. Names of objects… and numbers, next to them.

“You’re a merchant!” Sebastian exclaimed. The shadow person nodded.

He browsed the midair list. One item that jumped out at him was an iridium sprinkler, which probably explained the one Adrian had brought home exactly a week ago, last Friday…

Friday?

“Right!” Sebastian said out loud. “You have to stay silent on Fridays, for your religion, don’t you?”

They nodded vigorously, seeming impressed that Sebastian knew.

“I remember reading that’s not uncommon,” Sebastian mumbled. He’d have to come back another time, so that he could actually have the conversation he badly wanted to have.

His eyes went back to the list of products, and landed directly on something that stunned him.

“A stardrop…”

The cost was steep. More than Sebastian could scrape together from his own savings.

But… he’d need to get it.                                                    

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said to the shadow person with a smile. They vanished the midair catalog and bowed slightly.

Sebastian turned and began a brisk walk home, trying to think of how he was going to ask his mom to let him borrow that much money.

***************

“You’re working hard today,” Sebastian had said a month before, leaning on a fence and resting his face on his palm as he watched Adrian toil over a field of pumpkins.

Adrian stood up straight and wiped his brow with his forearm. “Harder than normal?”

Sebastian gestured at the sky, which was turning golden from the sunset. “You tell me.”

Adrian raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is it that time already?”

“You’re lost in your work,” Sebastian said cheerfully. “For much longer than usual.”

Adrian worked quickly to try and wrap up his work in the pumpkins. “I don’t know that it’s _too_ much longer.” He gave Sebastian a warm smile. “But it makes sense.”

“Does it?” Sebastian kicked one leg up behind him, toes tapping on the dirt. There was something to be said for the way Adrian appeared, even with the grime on his face, how heavenly the glow of twilight made him look.

…And for the way he was actually capable of making Sebastian think a thing like that.

“It does.” Adrian finished by kicking a new sprinkler into the ground. “It’s kind of like… overnight, I’ve become clearer and sharper and stronger.”

“That’s a hell of a spontaneous change, especially for someone I thought was the perfect man.” _Did that really just come out of MY mouth? First of all, when did I get to be anything even resembling smooth? Secondly…_

 “But it wasn’t spontaneous.” Adrian grinned sheepishly as he gathered his tools. “I… ate a stardrop yesterday.”

Sebastian had heard of them. And he knew the kinds of permanent effects they could have on people. But he’d never actually gotten to talk to someone about the experience. “Oh! And how was it?”

“Revolutionary,” Adrian said absently.

“That bad, huh?” Sebastian teased.

To his dismay, Adrian didn’t laugh. “I don’t know how I could ever put it to words.”

“Think you could try?”

Adrian looked at his toes. “It’s like everything I love was condensed into one transient moment. Every home I’ve had, every place I’ve been, every passion I’ve been moved by, all flashing through me at once.”

Sebastian blinked back his shock. “That was a pretty good try.”

“It’s something I think everyone should experience for themselves.” Adrian reached for Sebastian’s hand as the two began walking back to the house. “Someday, I’ll make sure you get one.”

Sebastian interlaced his fingers with Adrian’s. “Someday?”

“Yes.” Adrian was being as earnest as always. “I promise, I’ll make it happen. Once this farm has us set for life, I’ll make that my next priority.”

Set for life. It was something Sebastian had thought already, but hearing his own husband saying it made it seem like a much more impending possibility. Adrian was always finding new ways to make the farm more lucrative, and by Sebastian’s quick mental math, they really wouldn’t have to make any more money after ten years, tops, if they wanted to quit right then. Doubtless, Adrian would still maintain the farm, and Sebastian would still do his freelance work, but never with the feeling that they _needed_ to.

Someday.

It was going to happen. Somehow, Sebastian had landed the best possible someday he could imagine.

***************

Surprisingly, Sebastian had managed to borrow money from a few different people, enough to buy the stardrop, on the promise that he’d pay all of them back with the profits from his projects over the next year. He now re-entered the sewer with Adrian’s key, the necessary money, and the void egg in a jar.

The shadow person was in the same place, as expected. This time, they greeted Sebastian aloud: “Hello. I’m pleased to see you return as you said you would.”

“I wouldn’t want to let you down before I even got to talk to you,” Sebastian said with a smile. “My name is Sebastian, by the way.”

“I am Krobus.”

Krobus. Without warning, Sebastian felt a twinge of nervousness; this may have been a person from a species Sebastian had never encountered before, but they were still a person. Sebastian’s social anxiety reared its ugly head, and he had to do his best to tamp it back down.

“Sorry about yesterday,” Sebastian said. “I probably made that uncomfortable for you, blabbing on while you couldn’t say anything back.”

“There’s no need to worry,” Krobus replied. “If my weekly silence changed nothing about my life, it would be useless as a show of devotion to Yoba.”

“Good point.” Sebastian smiled at them. “I hope you’re not afraid of me, by the way.”

“Many of your kind are hostile towards me, and others of my race.” Krobus appeared to Sebastian to be wearing a somber expression. “Not without reason. But you aren’t alarmed by me, so I feel at ease speaking to you.”

 _That makes one of us._ “May I give you something?”

Krobus didn’t say anything, but Sebastian went ahead and unscrewed the lid of the jar, then pulled out the void egg. “Here.”

Krobus took a few steps closer, reached out with a barely-corporeal hand, and lifted the egg from Sebastian’s palm. “This… is an amazing gift,” they said. “For my people, it is a great honor to receive one of these.”

“I’m honored to be able to give it to you.” Sebastian felt himself starting to unclench the muscles in his body. Krobus was unaffected by human social norms, or really any of the usual expectations respecting human behavior. Sebastian didn’t need to perform anything. He needed only be himself.

“Do you get a lot of business down here?” Sebastian asked.

“I get enough,” Krobus answered shortly. “The wizard visits frequently to purchase supplies for arcane research. The farmer relies on me for the purchase of sprinklers, and once bought a stardrop from me.”

 _So this IS where he’s been getting all those fancy sprinklers_. “The farmer is my husband, by the way.”

“Husband?” Krobus’s eyes widened – literally. “I’m unfamiliar with the concept.”

“Oh, well…” Sebastian wasn’t expecting his cultural lesson for Krobus to be on the subject of marriage. “He and I are committed to live with each other and take care of each other, because… Well, because we love each other as deeply as we know how.”

“My people have a similar tradition,” Krobus said. “Does that mean the two of you also raise children together?”

Sebastian felt himself blushing. “In theory, yes, but…” He had only just recently started to consider that maybe he and Adrian should think about adopting a kid, and he hadn’t yet brought it up with Adrian. “I don’t know yet if he and I will be doing that.”

“It is a difficult decision.” Krobus appeared to understand what Sebastian wasn’t saying. “I wish the two of you the wisdom to choose the more appropriate path for yourselves.”

Sebastian was sure he had changed hues entirely now. “Thank you. But… don’t bring that up with Adrian, okay?”

“You have my word,” Krobus said. “I know the decision may be made more problematic if I interfere.”

Krobus was a very straightforward person. Sebastian made a mental note to get a copy of Adrian’s sewer key made, so that he could keep visiting Krobus without Adrian having lost anything.

“I have noticed, your husband has been a boon to many people he encounters,” Krobus continued. “Myself included. The money he has spent at my store allows me to live comfortably.”

“Hmm, that reminds me…” It just now occurred to Sebastian that Adrian could visit this sewer later, and would have no difficulty finding the money to purchase another stardrop. “Maybe I shouldn’t buy a stardrop,” he mused. “In case I limit the stock Adrian can buy.”

“You would not,” Krobus said. “There is a limit in place. One stardrop per customer.”

_Ah._

“Then… what’s stopping me from buying one?” Sebastian pulled the money from his stuffed pockets and held it out to Krobus. “I’ll go ahead and take it.”

The cash disappeared from his hand, and a stardrop now appeared in its place. He stared at it in awe. Was this really the magical fruit that he’d read so much about? It smelled… like long afternoons buried in his work, and like nights spent with Adrian’s arms around him.

“Thank you for your business,” Krobus said. “Please enjoy the stardrop. And remember to see me in the future, when you can.”

Sebastian promised to do just that. He felt a strange excitement, trying to promise something after duplicitously subverting Krobus’s one-stardrop limit.

Someday would come. But only Adrian could make proper use of the stardrop now. Sebastian, on the other hand, practically exerted almost no energy in the day to day.

He stepped away and looked at the stardrop in his palm. Already, he could smell a precious few of his favorite scents – salty water hitting the shore, rain’s impending fall, the aroma that hit him whenever he landed in the bed he shared with Adrian.

Giving his husband this small berry now would potentially shave off a few months, maybe a year, before someday came. It was the only way Sebastian could think of to express his thanks for everything Adrian had done. To try to do something for Adrian that meant at least a sliver of what he’d given Sebastian.

To try to match Adrian’s Devotion.

Sebastian could make himself wait for the experience of a lifetime. Especially if it meant bringing someday that much closer.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to come up with one possible way that Sebastian gets the stardrop that your spouse gives you at 13 hearts. I also wanted to show Sebastian and Krobus meeting each other. It's a friendship I might explore more in a future fic~
> 
> I tried to give the egg-hollowing scene a feeling kind of like a heart event in the game. I also made an attempt to depict game mechanics in a realistic way, which was one of the more fun things about writing this~
> 
> Please let me know what you think! I'm new to writing for SV, so I welcome comments ^.^


End file.
